I figured I’d bring this out in the open, because it’s an interesting facet of being a place where history is being told. And not just history, of course, but very specific history that a small number of people care about. It’s one thing to want “the truth” in history, and to want to know that all effort has been made to ensure accuracy. It’s another when almost nothing is truly affected by that history being different than who gets to say a few words at a party, or side-mouth mention a factoid during a speech. But this history, specifically the history of the Bulletin Board System, is the stuff I’ve been spending time on, so it’s something I have to look into.

If you define a BBS as a computer hooked to a phone line that automatically answers, and which lets you connect via modem to that computer and leave messages others can then read, then the first BBS is canonically known to be Ward Christensen and Randy Suess’ CBBS (Computerized Bulletin Board System). Work was started on it on January 16, 1978, with Ward doing software and Randy doing hardware. They had a working prototype on February 1st, but it’s generally said the first day they were up for the public is February 16, 1978. Good enough, with just a little bit of fuzzy slop.

It was not the first online messaging base. Ward in fact was on Arpanet and that’s where he got the idea for a BBS/Answering Machine that became CBBS.

It was not the first computer hooked to a modem. There were modems well before this time.

It was not the first online community sharing things to a general audience. PLATO has a lot of events and situations happen well before Ward starts working at IBM and gets access to neat equipment. PLATO, in fact, has this pretty amazing history and a bunch of people are working to get that history down.

The BBS Documentary gives some credit and mention to PLATO and Community Memory, because otherwise I would have gotten flak for making it seem the whole BBS thing just popped out of nowhere (which it obviously didn’t).

So there we are, a relatively set-in-stone story.

Until, occasionally, someone comes and tries to upset the apple cart. Here’s how that goes.

I got this “update” to the BBS List a few days ago:

Since the timespan on your drop-down only starts at 1978, it’s difficult to select the year 1972.  The timespan of the original “The Dude’s Home BBS” was 1972 to 1998 (”The Dude’s Home” was a precursor to the “CBB” in 1972 in Chicago, IL).  I believe that the term “BBS” was originally coined by Mark Malewski (The Dude) in 1975 (while Ward Christensen had used the term “CBB” for his project in 1978).  The original “The Dude’s Home” BBS was first brought online by Richard Kopera (in 1972) in Blue Island IL (also an early member of CACHE), and the first “Dude’s Home BBS” node was later moved to Midlothian IL in 1975 and that same year a second node was later brought back online in Blue Island IL.  I believe it was the first, and the longest running “BBS” in history, that ran between 1972 and 1998 (26 years). ”The Dude’s Home” was a precursor to the “CBB” project created by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess in 1978. ”The Dude’s Home BBS” (Node 1) was moved from Blue Island IL to Midlothian IL in 1975. The first (and original) Dude’s Home BBS phone number (in 1972) was 312-597-2903 (located in Blue Island IL), and that same BBS phone line existed between 1972 to 1998 (although it switched from Node 1 to Node 2 in 1975). I don’t recall the exact phone number of the Dude’s Home BBS Midlothian node 1 (in 1975), I do remember that it was a 312-389-xxxx number (Midlothian IL number). There were 8 “BBS” nodes total (The Dude’s Home BBS) over the years (located in Blue Island IL, Midlothian IL, Lemont IL, and Tempe AZ) between 1972 to 1998. Several of the nodes were all running concurrently.  I believe Richard Kopera and “The Dude” (Mark Malewski) were the original sysops of The Dude’s Home BBS and in 1987 I believe “King Diamond” (Joe Christ?) was a Co-Sysop of “The Dude’s Home BBS” (between 1987-1992) after the Midlothian IL BBS node was relocated to Lemont IL in 1986. I believe “The Dude’s Home” BBS (Mark Malewski & Richard Kopera) were the very first “BBS” to be selling “e-commerce” on their “BBS” with the online sale of U.S. Robotics Modems (Skokie, IL) on their “The Dude’s Home BBS” between 1975 to 1998. Richard Kopera was working closely with Paul Collard, (the lead engineer and founder of U.S. Robotics, Inc.) to test early prototype modems designed by Paul Collard between 1974-1975, just prior to the “U.S. Robotics, Inc.” forming in Skokie, IL in 1976. “

So this is interesting, because it breaks the whole history. In this version of events, Ward and Randy are not just latecomers to the game, but potentially inspired by a fellow computer club member. CBBS is not the name of the BBS they eventually come up with – they use CBB.

Let’s address the “CBB” claim, for example. That one appears to be, on objective observation, crap. Here’s some text from the printouts in May of 1978.  They clearly call it CBBS.  Here are photos of diskettes, one from 1979, calling it CBBS.  It’s just not true.

As additional fun, there’s quite obvious evidence that a little battle is brewing on Wikipedia about this history. Here’s the result of one set of edits, where one of Wikipedia’s Fine Editors went ahead and undid all of the declarations, claiming the information is false. In a previous edit, a bunch of citations were removed because all of the links, going to 3dmalls.net, were dead.

The registration info for 3dmalls.net is the same person who mailed me, who made these edits on Wikipedia that are undone. In other words, they cited their own page they wrote to bolster claims made nowhere else on the internet.

You see the problem here.  Thankfully for me, it doesn’t happen all that often.

During the BBS Documentary interview phase, I had someone claim to be someone else, quite insistently and convincingly, on the phone. If I hadn’t 1. Already interviewed the real person, 2. Personally known them since 1984, there might have been a bit of a hullaballo. As it was, I didn’t call back again to arrange an interview, of which he was quite willing to fly to my state to be interviewed.  Another small dodged (rubber) bullet.

All I can do, I think, is be grateful that there isn’t money involved, some sort of monetary value assigned to gaining the “prize”. At that point, things get pretty terrible and ironically, the stakes are high enough that you can’t just put aside the claims and see what shakes out over time.

Here the stakes are low, very low indeed. Still, I wish there weren’t people still playing for them.

This will be my 10th year attending DEFCON. I came in pretty late into actually attending hacker conferences, but I’ve tried to make up for lost time – I’ve attended something like 50 or thereabouts in the ensuing time. DEFCON continues to be the largest in most terms, with HOPE being a very close second.

Something about DEFCON makes it a much different experience with regard to meeting people who’ve heard of me in other quarters. It’s probably a combination of the incredible flow-through of folks (if you stand still you’ll have thousands go by you) and the huge variance of people who attend, because it’s in Las Vegas and folks from all over make a week of it. Either way, it comes down to I’m near a lot of people, some of who have heard of me through my projects or this site.

The thing I want to make clear is that I attend these cons for various reasons, but one of them is not to avoid pe0ple. If I wanted to avoid people, I wouldn’t go. I specifically and directly want to meet people, especially people who enjoy my work and want to talk to me.

Way too many times I have found out that someone attended a convention, saw me there, but was too nervous to walk up, or thought they read my face as “don’t approach me”. Let me assure you this is simply not the case.  I spend a lot of time, a lot of time behind a screen doing my various projects, and I only get a few days a year where I meet people who interact with those projects. I’m happy to talk as much as reality permits.

At this year’s conference, besides the aforementioned DENCON that I am assisting with, I am speaking about Archive Team as part of “Skytalks” (11am Sunday) and That Awesome Time I Was Sued for Two Billion Dollars at 3pm on Friday. Other than that, the schedule is pretty free. I’m up for hanging out.

See you there.

I attended KansasFest 2009, the 20th anniversary.

KansasFest is, basically, a 5-day Apple II-centric conference held in a dormitory/university in Kansas City, MO (hence the name). The history is that it had a previous name, but was informally called KansasFest, and when the original sponsor disappeared, the conference kept going and they kept the “new” name.

I was supposed to attend from the 21st of July to the 23rd, and then missed my flight, so I attended the morning of July 22nd to the morning of July 23rd. The plan had been I’d then go off to Comic-Con, but I didn’t go to Comic-Con (I went to a Makerbot party instead), so basically I just really did a drive-by on these guys. That was a shame; they deserved more time, and I am poorer for that.

I was invited by the organizers to give a Keynote. Here’s the keynote, recorded by Sean Fahey:

KansasFest 2009 Keynote with Jason Scott from Sean Fahey.

Sean has even more contextual information about KansasFest at his weblog, A2Central. Here’s his entries on KansasFest of which I am sure more will appear when he returns from it.

So what is the event like? Well, there were about three dozen people attending, and they’re very committed to Apple IIs. Maybe some people will make judgemental declarations based on that description, but it comes down to appreciating and enjoying technology, and I thought the vibe was one of enthusiasts having an enjoyable week together hanging out and discussing this subject. A subject, I might add, that has many myriad facets, be it the hardware, software, and lessons learned therein.

I had, again, a wonderful time. I’m proud to have been the 20th anniversary keynote. I’m glad they gave me that opportunity.

Apple II Forever!

OK, so the upshot is that the 4chan archives I’ve acquired will not be going up to archive.org, or anywhere public, anytime soon.

After a good amount of discussion with various mentors and friends, I’ve determined the negative results would outweigh the positive.  Don’t worry, nobody “got to” me. People don’t generally “get to” me with very good outcomes. It’s just a matter of timing. The short form, as they say: “too soon”.

But I’ll ensure the safety of this data and rest assured, at some point down the line, it’s getting out there. Copies are being made and drives stored in distant locations. All is well with the data.

So rest easy. I’m sorry for the turnaround there. Anything more in the way of apology or explanation would be redundant. That’s how it goes, folks.

Yes, this is my week for dropping all sorts of announcements and news.  Here’s another one.

Last year, after DEFCON came to a close, I was hanging out with a couple people from the staff and organization, including Dark Tangent, and I proposed the possibility of a retro room, something with older technology for the kids to see in person and the older kids to remember by. They said hells yes and they’d fund it a bit.

A year later, with a week to go before the convention happens, I’m announcing DENCON, the den you wish you had as a kid in the 1970s, in conjunction with a terrifying army of vintage computing heavyweights. We’ve been given a good portion of one of the rooms in the convention space.

We originally were going to be a skybox, but we got too goddamned big.

I’m working a lot of this out with Sellam Ismail of Vintagetech. We have a bunch of stuff coming down to the room, but I thought I’d let you know the centerpiece ahead of time:

Meet Pavl Zachary, and behold the awesome power of this fully functioning PDP 11/70. Yes, forget Web 2.0, we’re going to Unix 2.0. Time for learning, people – for most people attending this may be your last time to sit in front of the real hardware that lived at the roots of so much we do today.

Unlike a lot of events at DEFCON, there’s really been no need to give progress updates, make a call for submissions, or otherwise get in the news, but maybe if you thought about bringing an old-school t-shirt, some cool old clothing, or really anything from 30 years ago, maybe you should go ahead and do that, because you’re going to have a big chance to have one hell of a background for your photos. And some stories to tell.

We’ll likely have a page up soon with final details, but I wanted you all to be aware.  See you there!

Probably the best part of following a logical-conclusion path is when people supporting you with pumping fists, hoots, and hollers start to pump their fists a bit less and do a lot less hooting.

So let me inform you all and the world that, after many months of work and negotiation, I have acquired 10 million expired threads from 4chan’s history. Roughly half a decade’s worth.

Why? Because it’s part of online history, a study of the human soul when untethered by identity, a way to confirm statements made years ago… any range of reasons which I could not hope to compose out of the air for you. That’s not my job. My job is to save things. And now I’ve saved this.

It’s going on archive.org over the next week. I’ll let you know when it’s done. It’s dozens of gigabytes, and I have it in XML, HTML and MYSQL formats, all of which show different parts of the data. (Conversion strips out some data that original formats might not have, and so on.)

An awful lot of history that we have at our fingertips is because someone, somewhere, hit “save” instead of “delete”. Someone did that in this case, and so here we go.

Plan accordingly.

Update: This has been cancelled (postponed, really, for a few years). Please read this weblog entry.

from Don Nguyen
to sales@bbsdocumentary.com
cc Wilson Rothman ,
Jesus@gizmodo.com
date Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 5:37 PM
subject BBS pornography in 1979

Hi,
My name is Don Nguyen, and I work at Gizmodo, a gadget and technology website. We are currently working on features about technology thirty years ago, and one of the issues we want to look in to is the state of pornography on BBS ‘networks’ in 1979 and the very early 1980s. I came across your great documentary about BBS, and was wondering if there is any information you could provide us with that would help for the article.

Thank You,
Don Nguyen, Intern
Gizmodo.com

from Jason Scott
to Don Nguyen
date Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 6:05 PM
subject Re: BBS pornography in 1979
mailed-by textfiles.com

I am happy to be thought of as a go-to guy for BBS history, but I
can’t see how the article won’t be written in an exploitative way that
will demean users of BBSes for a quick chuckle. I think I’ll pass.
Keep me in mind for more uplifting aspects of that rich history.

from Wilson Rothman
to jason@textfiles.com
cc Don Nguyen
date Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 6:15 PM
subject Re: BBS pornography in 1979

Hi Jason – I’d like to compliment you on that succinct and insultingly reductive reply to my assistant’s genuine request for the information and expertise in your possession.

Let me know if you’d like to try again. Maybe you’d like to write the piece yourself? You’d be joining the ranks of guest bloggers ranging from astronauts to chefs, from Bill Nye the Science Guy to Adam Savage from MythBusters. Do you think all of them felt exploited when they willingly contributed their wisdom to Gizmodo?

Seriously, we’d love your input on this, if you want to share. And if you want to broaden it beyond the thrilling subject of sex, I’m all ears.

W
–
Wilson Rothman
Features Editor
Gizmodo.com
646-369-3252
Twitter: @wjrothman

from Jason Scott
to Wilson Rothman
date Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 6:34 PM
subject Re: BBS pornography in 1979

My answer remains no.

from Wilson Rothman
to Jason Scott
date Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 6:47 PM
subject Re: BBS pornography in 1979

Suit yourself. It’s too bad, because we really like working with people who are experts in their field, who are promoting their own projects. We reach 10 million people worldwide every month, and we’re happy to direct that attention to works we deem worthy. Your documentary seems like something people would actually want to know about — shame you’re not interested in promoting it.

I’m really just sad that you came into this dialog with such a sour attitude towards us. I certainly don’t deserve it. Can I ask, for academic reasons, what causes you to be so negative? Maybe it’s a misunderstanding that we can clear up?

W

(Conversation Ends.)

…is named Rob.

Rob and I are doing a trial set of days this week (I’m away during the middle of the week to keynote an Apple II festival) and we’ll see how a life of being given free food and drink but forced to log various bits of computer history fares for him. His twitter feed is @drcello, so feel free to wish him luck.

Update: Rob’s first day went swimmingly well – he cataloged hundreds of magazines across a day, emptying many boxes in my kitchen. It’s so great to come back to a project and find a second person has really given you a boost. Interns are great!

Ben Sherman had mentioned a few times he had a bunch of old magazines for me.  This past week, he dropped them off.

Ben has been on the staff of 2600 magazine for some time, and of course has collected his own stuff over the years. So I didn’t entirely know what I was getting, except that it was likely going to have some issues of 2600 magazine in there.

I didn’t expect to get all of them.

Now you know what every issue of 2600 might look like. This would be every issue from January 1984 (the premiere issue), appearing quarterly, up through the early 2000s. Since I already have the issues as of late, this means I basically have all the hard to get issues, the rare early ones, and specimens of all other sorts. This also includes a few draft copies, some one-off printing oddities, and other such goodness.

So that’s handled.

The rest of the collection is very interesting as well, as it contains a whole lot of stuff in the hacking/phreaking vein, almost as if they were trade-off copies for 2600 issues. I don’t know if that’s the case, or if it’s just overlapping interest, but there’s definitely some sort of punk/mediaprankery/phonefun/etc thing going on:

Issues in here include Iron Feather Journal, Fortean Times, Ben is Dead, Factsheet Five, Flipside, BoingBoing (you knew it was a magazine before a website, right?), Film Threat, Adbusters, Comics Journal, Subliminal Tattoos, Maximum Rock N’Roll, Gray Areas, and a bunch more. And that’s even before I get to the half-page zines, which I haven’t even opened up yet.

This is quite a breathtaking set of time, ranging from 1984 up through to about 2000, a sort of suburban kid’s lifeline 0f weird words, unusual pictures, and crazy promises that someone might be able to live up to if they ran far and fast enough in the right direction. At the very least, they might have a bunch of really strange references to connect with others in adulthood.

A great addition – thanks, Ben.

I will be the opening commencement speaker at ConfCon ‘09, which is being held in a little more than a week, on Saturday the 25th. You have very little excuse not to attend.

Why? Because ConfCon, a conference dedicated to the subject of Phone Phreaking, will be held on a telephone conference for five straight hours, from 5-10 PM CDT (3-8 PDT, 4-9 MDT, 6-11 EDT). That’s right, all you have to do is pick up the goddamned telephone and you’ll be able to attend.

Just check out the website for details, and I hope to hear you there.